Egypt - Dahab
Trip Start
Dec 09, 2007
1
Trip End
Dec 16, 2007
Dahab, Egypt
Sunday, December 9, 2007
Dahab use to be a lazy Bedouin village until tourist came for the diving and excellent wind surfing. Now it's hotel after hotel after dive shop after hotel. Normally I would just be heading through a place like this, but not this time. I had come to learn to dive.
The first day I got acquainted with the town and got given a book and was told to study. The next day I began 3 days of the Padi Open water dive course. I had to study every night and pass written tests in the morning. In the water I had to swim around performing tricks and prove that I was worthy. This was ok, but the four underwater dives looking at coral and the fishies was a lot more fun. Each of these dives would last about 40 minutes.
Previously I was quite concerned about my ears and being able to equalise. This didn't turn out to be a problem, although I did have some painful moments. Instead I always seemed to have a blood nose in the water, came from the capillaries in my nose bursting. This occurred even more for me, as I found the easiest way to equalise my ears, was to blow really hard out of my nose, making it bleed all the more.
Still apart from that, on the end of the third day I had my certificate and over then next two days worked on the Padi Advanced open water course. This involved a few more tricks and 5 open water dives. The first was a night dive with torches to see the coral which blooms only at night. Not seeing very far seems to add to the stress and one breathes a lot more air then normal. I think the best part of night diving is when you turn off your torch and watch the fins of the person in front of you. Movement underwater disturbs microscopic plankton which generates a little flash of chemical light. It's like having a little fireworks show.
Next came a deep dive where we swam out to a canyon and one by one fell into it. At the bottom we were around 30 meters deep and had to undergo tests to check for Nitrogen Narcosis which makes you drunk and can give you impressions of invincibility. I managed to pass the tests, and felt incredibly happy looking all that way back up to the surface. To get out of the canyon, we swam along the bottom for a bit and then through a largish half open cave we popped out again on the sea floor next to a large rock covered in goldfish, a little like butterflys.
In the afternoon the drift dive involved diving head first into a hole they call the Bells, because most people can't help hitting their bottles against the rock wall creating a bell sound. I took it nice and easy, not particularly wanting to freak out in a hole underwater. At 28 meters it stops going down and instead goes horizontal before opening out halfway down a reef wall.
The deeper you go under water the less of the colour spectrum you have. First goes all the yellows and reds and slowly works down till everything just is blue. So the reef wall while full of fish, was a bit dull in colour. We spent the next 20 minutes swimming along it with the current. Finally we arrived at a clearing where there was no coral but only sand. Here we dropped to the sandy sea floor and had a running race. Not sure who won as most people were running in opposite directions. I imagine it felt just like being on the moon as if you get your buoyancy just right, once you push off in one direction you just keep going. One good trick was to run directly towards someone and about 2 meters before you collide, you jump up and bring your legs up under and around to face the other person. When you feet collide with the other's feet, you push against them and you go flying in the opposite direction. All this exercise meant we used up a lot of our oxygen so had to get out before we were quite ready.
My final day of diving involved a naturalist dive which was just swimming around looking at the fishies and trying to recognise a few of them. I also learnt that if you see a giant turtle, then don't jump on its' back because they don't like it.
My final dive involved navigating, and required you to complete a little orienteering course with an underwater compass. Much less interesting then the previous day's dives but by now I was pretty drained and tired.
Not being able to dive 24 hours before a flight, I spent the final day floating around talking to the others who I had previously dived with. I arrived in London around 11pm and got home for 12 and fell into bed completely exhausted.
Comments
Adventurous
Great photos. A new skill to add to your collection. Almost envious, but chicken.